Netflix Adds Video Game Rentals

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Delivery service to be named "Qwikster."

By Andrew Goldfarb

Netflix will begin offering video game rentals this fall, the company announced tonight.

In a new blog post, Co-Founder and CEO Reed Hastings announced that the company's mail delivery service will be separated from its online streaming. The new delivery service is called Qwikster, and will "add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games."

"We realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses," Hastings wrote, "with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently."

Hastings released a short video detailing the reasoning behind the split along with Andy Rendich, head of Netflix's DVD operations and newly-minted CEO of Qwikster:

There will be no price changes associated with Qwikster, and credit card charges will appear separately from Netflix charges.

The service, which now has an official site, is set to launch "in a few weeks," but no additional details were given.